City of Brass
The City of Brass, changed greatly over the past forty-five years it has flowered and is a massive boom town. One that might give Sigil pause or even overtake them. Districts and Wards The City of Brass is divided into Muncipalities - which are really other cities 'annexed' into the City of Brass, Wards which are smaller than Muncipalities and finally Districts even smaller than Wards, some of which might be city blocks. Of note, the revised multi-planar structure of the City of Brass places some of it on every inner plane. Some planes only have 1 ward, others have entire muncipalities. A list of Wards, Municipalities, and Districts is here. Hourglass (Temporal Energy Plane) - District Masstown (Elemental??? Plane of Gravity) - District Lodestone (Demiplane??? Para-Elemental??? Elemental??? Plane of Magnetism) - District Lifeburst (Positive Energy Plane) - District Recent History Recent history begins fifty years ago, when the previous sultan died. Its suspected an adventuring party was responsable, but much distraction was had when the new sultan took over - and quickly proved incompetant being replaced in less than three months of rule. This set off a sort of civil war over who to succede to the position, which lasted three long years in the War of Song and Flame. Remarkably a half human relative of the Sultan named Ymir Balsweir won the position. A part human ruler however, didnt make anyone happy and Ymir compromised by accepting various advisors and vizers, trying to play them off against each other. The end result 45 years ago was Ymir being a public figure ruling jointly with a Council - one that so feared assassain's blades they kept to themsleves. The arrangement would last 15 years, and lead to impressive growth - but only within the City of Brass. New buisnesses were added, the slave trade boomed, and Ymir ruled with an iron fist. Ymir however was part human and aged. He died - remarkably not by an assassain blade but by his own efforts to solve his own mortality via some form of longevity potion he made - which didnt work. So brutal was he however, that it took two months after his demise for him to be declared dead offically - time well used by the City Council. A new sultan was chosen, but despite efforts, only some power is held there the rest is held by this Council whom no one knows the identity of. Aftter Ymir's death and the ascension of the new sultan thirty years ago, the City Council began an ambitious bid to increase the number of gates in the city to other inner planes, followed by a large increase in the city itself. Most of this increase for the next few years was governed by the need for rare spell components for powerful spells which thanks to these gates were easily had. Trade rivalries began with other cities on the inner planes as the lucrative nature of this trade grew and expanded, much more so with the discovery of the Plane of Time 26 years ago. This led to much excitement and an increased population of mage types seeking experimentation there - and the city council seeking to increase its monopoly made a number of portals to the plane of Earth. Exactly what happened next is unknown, so the facts are presented. Somehow the city of the Dao was annexed to the City of Brass in exchange for unknown concessions, prompting a massive rise in the slave trade, and somehow this led to the discovery of the plane of gravity and the settlement of mass town and many laws concerning who could be in Hourglass and what could be done - with many provsions unknown. From this other annexations occured, in the plane of air, and then the plane of water. Much power went to those still in those cities even if they used the overarcing name the City of Brass, and it is widely speculated that profit caused the corrupt within these metropoli to join up to become part of the city council. From this eventually the city of brass expanded into the quasi and demi elemental planes, expanding buisness as of ten years ago to include the third major corner stone of the economy. Trade in mercenaries, many parts of the other inner planar cities. Quite recently in the past five years, an outpost was made in the positive energy plane, negative energy plane, in the deep Ethereal, and in the plane of magnetism. The irony is as time goes by less and less is known of who really rules the city, or what the intentions are. However, for mercenaries, slaves or elemental items the City of Brass is superior to Sigil by and large, and every year its trade comes closer and closer to the City of Doors.